Billionaire Sam Walton, who controls one of the biggest fortunes in America, says he has a better than even chance of winning his battle with bone cancer.
Walton, the 71-year-old founder and chairman of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form of bone cancer and is receiving treatment at M.D. Anderson Hospital in Houston.He returned Friday to his home in Bentonville, Ark., where Wal-Mart keeps its corporate offices, to attend weekend meetings.
He is scheduled to return to Houston on Monday to resume chemotherapy and radiation treatments on his back and on his bones, which he said have become soft and developed holes because of the cancer.
Walton said the treatments have been effective and that he has about a 60 percent chance of recovery from the disease.
"I'm getting on a lot better," he said Friday. "I've been on this treatment for about a week and there seems to be definite improvement in the way I feel and the way I'm walking."
If his current therapy regime does not work, he said, he'll have to take heavier doses of chemotherapy with greater side effects. "We're trying to do it with a less-type treatment at this point . . . I'm one of the real fortunate folks who have people believing in me and wanting to help and I wish it were that way with everybody."